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Hope this christmas brings to everyone, peace, joy, love, good health, prosperity. Hope Christmas Eve was a blissful night to everyone, and that you enjoyed it to the maximum, I know I did. Our night was full of great company, great relatives, great talks, great laughs, great food. And I was full from the begining of the evening. The table was full, of every kind of food, cheeses, hams, stuffed doughs, home-made pizzas, hummus and baba ghanouj dipping, fried meat(kebbe)… and the desserts, there was the ones I prepared, cookies, chocolate clusters and two bûches de noël.

As I mentioned before, I prepared different kinds of desserts, and I wanted to end the baking this week with the prestigious dessert, a Bûche De Noël. I made two bûches. In this post I will write about the one I chose from a magazine, Olive, the Mocha Chocolate Roulade.

The bûche was a success, everyone loved it and it was abit different, not buttery, strong chocolate and coffee flavors, soft and moist than the store-bought bûches. It was so delicious. I was very happy baking this roulade.

Mocha Chocolate Roulade, adapted from BBC Olive, December issue

– 75 g self-raising flour

– 1 tsp baking powder

– 50 g cocoa powder, plus more to dust

– 2 tsp espresso coffee powder

– 5 eggs

– 100g caster sugar, plus a little extra

Mocha cream filling

– 300 ml double cream

– 1 tsp espresso coffee powder dissolved in 2 tsp boiling water

– 1 tsp vanilla extract

– 2 tbsp Cognac

Decoration

– 100 g dark chocolate

– 75 ml double cream

– icing sugar for dusting

Heat the oven to 180 C. Line a 30×40 cm swiss roll tin with parchment paper, butter and dust with cocoa. Sift the flour, baking powder, coffee and cocoa into a bowl. Beat the eggs and caster sugar with an electric mixer until thick, pale , trebled in volume, about 8 – 10 minutes.

Quickly fold in the flour mix with a large metal spoon, the less air you squash out the better. Pour into the tin, tipping the tin so the batter is even. Bake for 10 minutes until firm.

Cool the sponge for 2 minutes, then turn it out onto baking parchment dusted with caster sugar. Peel off the lining paper and roll up the sponge using the paper underneath. No worries if it cracks, it will be covered with cream.

For the mocha filling, whisk cream with the other ingredients until firm. Gently unroll the sponge and spread cream out gently. Reroll the roulade as tightly as you can without squashing out the filling.

Chop the chocolate, put in bowl, heat 75ml double cream, pour over chocolate and stir. Cool, then spread a thin layer over the roulade. Before serving, dust with icing sugar.